This meme that the US had anything to do with Pinochet’s coup has to stop. Your own Wikipedia link says that the US did not have anything to do with the coup,
“Although CIA did not instigate the coup that ended Allende’s government on 11 September 1973, it was aware of coup-plotting by the military, had ongoing intelligence collection relationships with some plotters, and—because CIA did not discourage the takeover and had sought to instigate a coup in 1970—probably appeared to condone it.”
The CIA underwent efforts to destabilize Allende’s regime in 1970 that were unsuccessful and only served to consolidate power around him as the Chilean people were not fond of the idea that foreigners were attempting to kill their president. Pinochet’s coup however was an internal affair, he was not contacted by the CIA, he received no monetary or military assistance from the CIA, and the CIA actually made his job harder by trying to start a military coup and completely failing three years earlier.
But you go beyond alleging mere US involvement and say that “The USA overthrew Chile’s democratic government” as if the Chilean military was a branch of the US Armed Forces. That is false and completely out of line with reality.
I agree that “the USA overthrew Chile’s government” seems like it goes too far. But your initial comment, objecting to the idea that the US had anything to do with Pinochet’s coup, also seems like it goes too far.
A few excerpts from that same Wikipedia page:
After a review of recordings of telephone conversations between Nixon and Henry Kissinger, Robert Dallek concluded that both of them used the CIA to actively destabilize the Allende government. [...] In one particular conversation about the news of Allende’s overthrow, Kissinger complains about the lack of recognition of the American role in the overthrow of a “communist” government, upon which Nixon remarked, “Well, we didn’t – as you know – our hand doesn’t show on this one.” [...] Historian Peter Winn found “extensive evidence” of United States complicity in the coup. He states that its covert support was crucial to engineering the coup, as well as for the consolidation of power by the Pinochet regime following the takeover. [...] Peter Kornbluh asserts that the CIA destabilized Chile and helped create the conditions for the coup, citing documents declassified by the Clinton administration. Other authors point to the involvement of the Defense Intelligence Agency, agents of which allegedly secured the missiles used to bombard the La Moneda Palace.
That last one is only “allegedly”. But all of that looks, on the face of it, like the US absolutely did have something to do with Pinochet’s coup, no?
You haven’t quoted a single factual allegation that would be considered US involvement in Chile so there’s nothing for me to contest here. The only quote that one could consider evidence is this supposed admission by Nixon:
“After a review of recordings of telephone conversations between Nixon and Henry Kissinger, Robert Dallek concluded that both of them used the CIA to actively destabilize the Allende government
I’ve explained that the US attempts to destabilize Chile prior to 1973 actually served to strengthen support of Allende, who was not well liked in the immediate aftermath of the election[1][2]. The acts of American aggression against Chile including the CIA-backed assassination of Chilean official René Schneider made Allende seem like more of a good guy than he actually was.
Besides that I don’t know what actual facts these random historians are basing their ultimate conclusions on but you didn’t include that information anywhere. What is this “extensive evidence” these Peters are referring to? What exactly did the Nixon administration do to support Pinochet?
Did the US give him money? No, we exchanged in trade.
Did the US give him weapons? No he had weapons of his own.
Did the US train his soldiers? No we only trained his economists.
If you are claiming that the US helped Pinochet’s coup you have to say what they actually did to help! You can’t just point to a random historian making an ultimate conclusion without citing any underlying facts and think that’s that.
It’s true that I haven’t given details (not least because I don’t know them) nor cited my sources (beyond what you can find in the Wikipedia article from which I quoted them). It’s a bit odd, though, for you to complain at my lack of such details while giving no such details yourself.
I made some assertions about the Pinochet coup that are backed only by references to Robert Dallek (a history professor at reputable universities, specializing in US presidents), Peter Winn (a history professor at a reputable university, specializing in Latin America), and Peter Kornbluh (director of the National Security Archive’s Chile Documentation Project).
You made some contrary assertions about the Pinochet coup that are backed only by your say-so.
That doesn’t mean mine are right and yours are wrong! The Wikipedia page may be misrepresenting what those historians say, or cherry-picking particular claims that give a misleading impression of their opinions. Or the historians might be wrong; history is difficult. But it seems a bit rich to complain that I’m not providing enough evidence in enough detail, when you have provided zero evidence in zero detail.
(It would be less odd if the opinion you’re complaining of inadequate support for were some sort of fringe view: I think it’s reasonable to have a heuristic where one needs more evidence when defying conventional opinion. But, whether it’s right or wrong, the idea that the US was involved in the Pinochet coup is the conventional opinion.)
I have cited my sources in both my original comment and the followup, and I have included footnotes in my last reply. I cited Wikipedia for my original claims that the US was not involved in Pinochet’s coup. This comment is pure falsehood about what I’ve previously said, creating some weird, fake strawman that you can complain about for not citing any sources.
But, whether it’s right or wrong, the idea that the US was involved in the Pinochet coup is the conventional opinion
I don’t care what most morons on the internet think. Read the Wikipedia article on the US involvement in Chile and half the statements in there are that the US did absolutely nothing to help Pinochet’s coup, they only fucked some earlier coup attempts up, because that’s the only logical conclusion one can come to when they’re looking at the actual underlying facts and not some historian’s bogus, lying opinion. You’re the one making a claim, ‘The US was involved in Pinochet’s 1973 Chilean revolution.’ You have to support that claim. What the hell am I supposed to do to argue against that if I don’t even know the basis of your claim? Am I supposed to cite some random historian that says the US wasn’t involved in the Chilean coup? No. That’s stupid and I don’t believe that debates are supposed to be one side citing some historian that says this and another side citing another historian that says the opposite. Then we’ll get nowhere. But if you really want nonsense like that go read this article: https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/on-us-involvement-in-chilean-coup/2013/12/12/a61e9ecc-6125-11e3-a7b4-4a75ebc432ab_story.html that is a conclusion from a person with knowledge who is citing few underlying facts, just like your historian quotes.
If you want a response actually give me a theory of the case, give me some explanation for how the US was behind the coup. I’m disinclined to respond if you choose to strawman my comments again.
(Aside: I’m a bit surprised by how angry you seem to be about this. Is there some particular context?)
I have cited my sources in both my original comment and the followup
Literally the only source you cite in your original comment, so far as I can see, is the Wikipedia article already referenced by the person you were responding to. I cite the same source myself. Why is that sufficient citation when you do it but not when I do it? -- Or is there some other citation I have missed despite carefully rereading both your comments?
I have included footnotes in my last reply.
Including footnotes only counts as citing sources if the footnotes contain actual citations. In this case, your footnotes lead to two other Wikipedia articles and a transcript of a recording of a White House meeting involving Richard Nixon and Henry Kissinger. One of those Wikipedia articles is about the 1970 election in Chile and therefore has little to say about the US’s involvement if any in the 1973 coup, and what you actually use it to support is a statement about how much of the vote Allende got in 1970, which again has little to say about the US’s involvement if any in the 1973 coup. The other Wikipedia article, about Pinochet, you cite in support of a claim that Pinochet was in charge of cracking down on anti-Allende riots before the coup. Again, this tells us nothing about whether and how the US was involved in the coup. Finally, the transcript (from 1971) indicates that in 1971 Nixon thought Allende was terrible and didn’t want to increase US military aid to Chile; this again says nothing about whether or not the US got involved in the coup two years later.
A source citation for the actually controversial claim you’re making, namely that the US had nothing at all to do with the coup, might be e.g. to someone saying “The US had nothing to do with the Pinochet coup” or to a transcript of a White House meeting in 1973 where someone says “Mr President, this guy Pinochet wants to mount a coup and wonders if we can help” and Nixon says “I don’t give a damn what he wants; we’re continuing to leave Chile completely alone. No intervention, and that’s my final word”. Etc. Nothing remotely like any of that is in any of the things you cited. So, again, you are complaining that I have not cited sources for the claim that the US had some involvement in the coup (other than, y’know, two historians with relevant expertise and the head of the NSA’s “Chile Documentation Project”) and you are offering no sources for the claim that the US had no involvement in the coup.
To be clear, I’m not saying you’re obliged to provide any such citations. You’re welcome to go on just asserting that the US had no involvement. But in that case you have no business complaining that I have provided no citations for my opposing claim.
If you want a response actually give me a theory of the case, give me some explanation for how the US was behind the coup.
I am not claiming the US was “behind the coup”. I am claiming (tentatively, and willing to be corrected with actual evidence) that it looks as if the US had some involvement in the coup, so that your original statement “This meme that the US had anything to do with Pinochet’s coup has to stop.” goes a bit too far. (I agreed with you that lsusr was wrong to say that “the US overthrew” Chile’s government.)
You are missing the extraordinary claim here. The extraordinary claim which requires extraordinary evidence is that the CIA successfully instigated a coup. That’s a really hard thing to do. Had they done so we would expect good evidence of them planning it and being involved.
The fact that we know they tried two years prior and failed suggests that
We would probably have evidence of them trying in 1973 if they did so
We need evidence that their attempts were effective, since most encourage coup attempts fail
The Chile-driven coup explanation looks good because
A coup makes sense given the high levels of disorder in Chile at the time
Chile’s political institutions fit the coup profile
The structure of the coup is ordinary (no events which demand a CIA explanation)
The claim that the CIA had a decisive role in the coup really is silly because the evidence is weak and unnecessary to explain the outcomes.
I have already explicitly disagreed twice with that “extraordinary claim”. The much weaker claim that I am defending (again: tentatively, in the knowledge that I could turn out to be wrong because the evidence readily available to me is not conclusive) is that the US had something to do with the Pinochet coup. frontier64′s original comment here denied that, not merely the stronger (and, I agree, probably wrong) claim that the US was responsible for the coup, and that’s the only thing I’m disagreeing with frontier64 about here.
(Well, no, it’s not the only thing; we also apparently disagree about whether frontier64 did or did not cite sources in support of the statement that the US had nothing to do with the Pinochet coup. That’s a thing anyone can check just by reading the comments in this thread, though.)
The statement “The US had something to do with the Pinochet coup” is so vague that it’s obviously true. For example, the statement “The US had something to do with the Soviet launch of Sputnik” is also true, since some paper some soviet scientist read was written by an American, and they were competing with us. Or the statement “the US had something to do with Uruguay’s invention of the pacemaker”, etc.
Let us cache out some more useful statements.
Did US policy increase the probability of a coup occuring in Chile by any amount: Most likely yes. Pinochet knew that America would tolerate a coup based on US past policy. Our available evidence suggests this was a small factor in Pinochet’s calculus, relative to if the US had no signals. The failed attempt in 1971 might have actually protected Allende, we can’t know for sure.
Could a different US policy have decreased the probability of a coup occurring by any amount: Again, almost certainly yes. There are reasonable indications that changes in US policy since 1990 have decreased the rate of coups in Latin America. The effect of this counterfactual is much lower than the endogenous Chilean factors or the influence of Chile’s immediate neighbors. But would have been non-negligible.
Was the main reason for the coup Chile’s internal politics: Clearly yes. The outcome of the US’s early attempt shows that Chilean democracy was difficult to influence from outside. Meanwhile we know that the role of institutional factors in coups is very large. You can look at coup-cast’s predictions for Sudan currently. Or look at outcomes by various taxonomies of democracy.
If “The US had something to do with the coup” is so vague as to be trivial, then “This meme that the US had anything to do with Pinochet’s coup has to stop” is so overstated as to be trivially wrong. (Obviously that’s not your fault, unless you and frontier64 happen to be the same person going by two names.)
Your more finely-tuned statements all seem reasonable to me, though I don’t know enough about the Pinochet coup to say more than that.
The “article” you link to isn’t an article. It is a letter to the editor. And it wasn’t written by a historian. It was written by a retired U.S. Foreign Service officer.
The real article is a book review about “a CIA-backed coup”. The book in question is written by a professor of human rights and political philosophy at the University of London (Birkbeck) who won the Frantz Fanon Prize in 2010 for one of his several other books about Latin American history.
This meme that the US had anything to do with Pinochet’s coup has to stop. Your own Wikipedia link says that the US did not have anything to do with the coup,
The CIA underwent efforts to destabilize Allende’s regime in 1970 that were unsuccessful and only served to consolidate power around him as the Chilean people were not fond of the idea that foreigners were attempting to kill their president. Pinochet’s coup however was an internal affair, he was not contacted by the CIA, he received no monetary or military assistance from the CIA, and the CIA actually made his job harder by trying to start a military coup and completely failing three years earlier.
But you go beyond alleging mere US involvement and say that “The USA overthrew Chile’s democratic government” as if the Chilean military was a branch of the US Armed Forces. That is false and completely out of line with reality.
I agree that “the USA overthrew Chile’s government” seems like it goes too far. But your initial comment, objecting to the idea that the US had anything to do with Pinochet’s coup, also seems like it goes too far.
A few excerpts from that same Wikipedia page:
That last one is only “allegedly”. But all of that looks, on the face of it, like the US absolutely did have something to do with Pinochet’s coup, no?
You haven’t quoted a single factual allegation that would be considered US involvement in Chile so there’s nothing for me to contest here. The only quote that one could consider evidence is this supposed admission by Nixon:
I’ve explained that the US attempts to destabilize Chile prior to 1973 actually served to strengthen support of Allende, who was not well liked in the immediate aftermath of the election[1][2]. The acts of American aggression against Chile including the CIA-backed assassination of Chilean official René Schneider made Allende seem like more of a good guy than he actually was.
Besides that I don’t know what actual facts these random historians are basing their ultimate conclusions on but you didn’t include that information anywhere. What is this “extensive evidence” these Peters are referring to? What exactly did the Nixon administration do to support Pinochet?
Did the US give him money? No, we exchanged in trade.
Did the US give him weapons? No he had weapons of his own.
Did the US train his soldiers? No we only trained his economists.
If you are claiming that the US helped Pinochet’s coup you have to say what they actually did to help! You can’t just point to a random historian making an ultimate conclusion without citing any underlying facts and think that’s that.
He only got 36% of the vote and was running against two other candidates from anti-communist parties. (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1970_Chilean_presidential_election)
He openly assassinated political rivals and let communists sow terror in the streets while he forced the military, ironically led by Pinochet, to crack down on anti-Allende riots. (http://nixontapeaudio.org/chile/517-004.pdf) (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Augusto_Pinochet)
It’s true that I haven’t given details (not least because I don’t know them) nor cited my sources (beyond what you can find in the Wikipedia article from which I quoted them). It’s a bit odd, though, for you to complain at my lack of such details while giving no such details yourself.
I made some assertions about the Pinochet coup that are backed only by references to Robert Dallek (a history professor at reputable universities, specializing in US presidents), Peter Winn (a history professor at a reputable university, specializing in Latin America), and Peter Kornbluh (director of the National Security Archive’s Chile Documentation Project).
You made some contrary assertions about the Pinochet coup that are backed only by your say-so.
That doesn’t mean mine are right and yours are wrong! The Wikipedia page may be misrepresenting what those historians say, or cherry-picking particular claims that give a misleading impression of their opinions. Or the historians might be wrong; history is difficult. But it seems a bit rich to complain that I’m not providing enough evidence in enough detail, when you have provided zero evidence in zero detail.
(It would be less odd if the opinion you’re complaining of inadequate support for were some sort of fringe view: I think it’s reasonable to have a heuristic where one needs more evidence when defying conventional opinion. But, whether it’s right or wrong, the idea that the US was involved in the Pinochet coup is the conventional opinion.)
I have cited my sources in both my original comment and the followup, and I have included footnotes in my last reply. I cited Wikipedia for my original claims that the US was not involved in Pinochet’s coup. This comment is pure falsehood about what I’ve previously said, creating some weird, fake strawman that you can complain about for not citing any sources.
I don’t care what most morons on the internet think. Read the Wikipedia article on the US involvement in Chile and half the statements in there are that the US did absolutely nothing to help Pinochet’s coup, they only fucked some earlier coup attempts up, because that’s the only logical conclusion one can come to when they’re looking at the actual underlying facts and not some historian’s bogus, lying opinion. You’re the one making a claim, ‘The US was involved in Pinochet’s 1973 Chilean revolution.’ You have to support that claim. What the hell am I supposed to do to argue against that if I don’t even know the basis of your claim? Am I supposed to cite some random historian that says the US wasn’t involved in the Chilean coup? No. That’s stupid and I don’t believe that debates are supposed to be one side citing some historian that says this and another side citing another historian that says the opposite. Then we’ll get nowhere. But if you really want nonsense like that go read this article: https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/on-us-involvement-in-chilean-coup/2013/12/12/a61e9ecc-6125-11e3-a7b4-4a75ebc432ab_story.html that is a conclusion from a person with knowledge who is citing few underlying facts, just like your historian quotes.
If you want a response actually give me a theory of the case, give me some explanation for how the US was behind the coup. I’m disinclined to respond if you choose to strawman my comments again.
(Aside: I’m a bit surprised by how angry you seem to be about this. Is there some particular context?)
Literally the only source you cite in your original comment, so far as I can see, is the Wikipedia article already referenced by the person you were responding to. I cite the same source myself. Why is that sufficient citation when you do it but not when I do it? -- Or is there some other citation I have missed despite carefully rereading both your comments?
Including footnotes only counts as citing sources if the footnotes contain actual citations. In this case, your footnotes lead to two other Wikipedia articles and a transcript of a recording of a White House meeting involving Richard Nixon and Henry Kissinger. One of those Wikipedia articles is about the 1970 election in Chile and therefore has little to say about the US’s involvement if any in the 1973 coup, and what you actually use it to support is a statement about how much of the vote Allende got in 1970, which again has little to say about the US’s involvement if any in the 1973 coup. The other Wikipedia article, about Pinochet, you cite in support of a claim that Pinochet was in charge of cracking down on anti-Allende riots before the coup. Again, this tells us nothing about whether and how the US was involved in the coup. Finally, the transcript (from 1971) indicates that in 1971 Nixon thought Allende was terrible and didn’t want to increase US military aid to Chile; this again says nothing about whether or not the US got involved in the coup two years later.
A source citation for the actually controversial claim you’re making, namely that the US had nothing at all to do with the coup, might be e.g. to someone saying “The US had nothing to do with the Pinochet coup” or to a transcript of a White House meeting in 1973 where someone says “Mr President, this guy Pinochet wants to mount a coup and wonders if we can help” and Nixon says “I don’t give a damn what he wants; we’re continuing to leave Chile completely alone. No intervention, and that’s my final word”. Etc. Nothing remotely like any of that is in any of the things you cited. So, again, you are complaining that I have not cited sources for the claim that the US had some involvement in the coup (other than, y’know, two historians with relevant expertise and the head of the NSA’s “Chile Documentation Project”) and you are offering no sources for the claim that the US had no involvement in the coup.
To be clear, I’m not saying you’re obliged to provide any such citations. You’re welcome to go on just asserting that the US had no involvement. But in that case you have no business complaining that I have provided no citations for my opposing claim.
I am not claiming the US was “behind the coup”. I am claiming (tentatively, and willing to be corrected with actual evidence) that it looks as if the US had some involvement in the coup, so that your original statement “This meme that the US had anything to do with Pinochet’s coup has to stop.” goes a bit too far. (I agreed with you that lsusr was wrong to say that “the US overthrew” Chile’s government.)
You are missing the extraordinary claim here. The extraordinary claim which requires extraordinary evidence is that the CIA successfully instigated a coup. That’s a really hard thing to do. Had they done so we would expect good evidence of them planning it and being involved.
The fact that we know they tried two years prior and failed suggests that
We would probably have evidence of them trying in 1973 if they did so
We need evidence that their attempts were effective, since most encourage coup attempts fail
The Chile-driven coup explanation looks good because
A coup makes sense given the high levels of disorder in Chile at the time
Chile’s political institutions fit the coup profile
The structure of the coup is ordinary (no events which demand a CIA explanation)
The claim that the CIA had a decisive role in the coup really is silly because the evidence is weak and unnecessary to explain the outcomes.
I have already explicitly disagreed twice with that “extraordinary claim”. The much weaker claim that I am defending (again: tentatively, in the knowledge that I could turn out to be wrong because the evidence readily available to me is not conclusive) is that the US had something to do with the Pinochet coup. frontier64′s original comment here denied that, not merely the stronger (and, I agree, probably wrong) claim that the US was responsible for the coup, and that’s the only thing I’m disagreeing with frontier64 about here.
(Well, no, it’s not the only thing; we also apparently disagree about whether frontier64 did or did not cite sources in support of the statement that the US had nothing to do with the Pinochet coup. That’s a thing anyone can check just by reading the comments in this thread, though.)
The statement “The US had something to do with the Pinochet coup” is so vague that it’s obviously true. For example, the statement “The US had something to do with the Soviet launch of Sputnik” is also true, since some paper some soviet scientist read was written by an American, and they were competing with us. Or the statement “the US had something to do with Uruguay’s invention of the pacemaker”, etc.
Let us cache out some more useful statements.
Did US policy increase the probability of a coup occuring in Chile by any amount: Most likely yes. Pinochet knew that America would tolerate a coup based on US past policy. Our available evidence suggests this was a small factor in Pinochet’s calculus, relative to if the US had no signals. The failed attempt in 1971 might have actually protected Allende, we can’t know for sure.
Could a different US policy have decreased the probability of a coup occurring by any amount: Again, almost certainly yes. There are reasonable indications that changes in US policy since 1990 have decreased the rate of coups in Latin America. The effect of this counterfactual is much lower than the endogenous Chilean factors or the influence of Chile’s immediate neighbors. But would have been non-negligible.
Was the main reason for the coup Chile’s internal politics: Clearly yes. The outcome of the US’s early attempt shows that Chilean democracy was difficult to influence from outside. Meanwhile we know that the role of institutional factors in coups is very large. You can look at coup-cast’s predictions for Sudan currently. Or look at outcomes by various taxonomies of democracy.
Finally, this is all Hamilton’s fault for introducing presidentialism and checks and balances). Federalism is cool though, that was a good idea.
If “The US had something to do with the coup” is so vague as to be trivial, then “This meme that the US had anything to do with Pinochet’s coup has to stop” is so overstated as to be trivially wrong. (Obviously that’s not your fault, unless you and frontier64 happen to be the same person going by two names.)
Your more finely-tuned statements all seem reasonable to me, though I don’t know enough about the Pinochet coup to say more than that.
The “article” you link to isn’t an article. It is a letter to the editor. And it wasn’t written by a historian. It was written by a retired U.S. Foreign Service officer.
The real article is a book review about “a CIA-backed coup”. The book in question is written by a professor of human rights and political philosophy at the University of London (Birkbeck) who won the Frantz Fanon Prize in 2010 for one of his several other books about Latin American history.